Chapter 27South Caucasus, 12th Century
His name was Ilyas, but he called himself “Nizami,” an Arabic Muslim name that can refer to one who is logical and organized, which he certainly was, but which he preferred to think of as aligned with all that is beautiful and creative in this world.
The two—the pragmatic and the artistic—were always at war, were they not, for the heart and mind of the writer, he thought. There were those among his family and friends who urged him from the beginning to seek out fame and fortune as a court poet, and Nizami had wrestled with the choice of court life, with all the turbulent politics it implied, and that of the life of the mind that awaited him at his home in his native city of Ganja.
In the end, he chose his home, with its extensive library for readin
